Philharmonia Choir of Cape Town to perform Mozart and Haydn masterpieces

The Philharmonia Choir of Cape Town will perform at Cape Town City Hall on Saturday, June 21, with a concert featuring two well-known choral works: Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Haydn’s Nelson Mass.

The performance comes after the choir's sold-out Messiah shows and a recent performance with Andrea Bocelli in April.

The Coronation Mass, composed in 1779 during Mozart’s time as composer for Salzburg Cathedral, is one of the most popular of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 17 settings of the Ordinary Mass. The work acquired the nickname Coronation Mass at the Imperial court in Vienna in the early nineteenth century after becoming the preferred music for royal and imperial coronations.

Written in 1798 towards the end of Haydn’s life, the Nelson Mass is seen as one of the crowning achievements of his career. Although Haydn was at the height of his powers, the world was in chaos, with Napoleon waging war across Europe. When Haydn finished this mass, his own title was Missa in angustiis (Mass for Troubled Times). What Haydn did not know when he wrote the mass—but what he and his audiences soon learned—was that Nelson had delivered a crushing defeat to the French forces, and so the mass gradually acquired the nickname Nelson Mass.

The concert will be conducted by the esteemed Daniel Boico and will showcase the talents of the choir’s frequent collaborators, the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra. Four exceptional soloists will join the choir and orchestra: soprano Brittany Smith, alto Jacobi de Villiers, tenor Lukhanyo Moyake, and bass Conroy Scott.

Tickets available at Quicket